Saturday, October 02, 2010

An Exercise to the Listener

I don't think there's much of note in the last two shows, but it's hard to say. I've been trying to throw new bands into the fairly regular circulation of records that seems to come out for every show I do - something to break the standard Pavement-Versus-Yo La Tengo monotony that seems to be typical of the standard Respect is Due show. Pavement, Versus, and Yo La Tengo are amazing bands - all three of them - and although I wouldn't mind devoting shows to each, I'd wonder if I'd be boring my listeners by focusing on my specific, particular interests instead of trying to connect songs in ways that highlights the interconnectiveness of all of indie music's subgenres.

I ended up finding an interesting 7" single by a band called Drums and Tuba in the library. The A-side contains drums and spiky, trebly math-rock guitar, and seems to be missing the large brass cousin of the euphonium... until the spoken word lyrics start. You see, the song on the single is a spoken word rant about the singer (tubist?) getting harassed by the police for practicing his tuba on the campus of a state university. No idea whether it's a real story, but the delivery and timing give it something most math-rock doesn't have: a sense of humor. You look at something canonical like Slint or Don Caballero and despite the level of musicianship, it's hard to see them take a joke about their music. With Slint this seems to work well - but with Don Caballero you get the same type of technical wankery that make Emerson, Lake, and Palmer the laughing stock of music elitists today.

It also reminds me that I've seen people practicing tuba outside on campus here at CMU several times - it seems to be a common enough practice, actually.

Take a look at this week's playlist if you're interested. I think you'll get what I'm saying about getting into a musical rut with a standard circulation of albums - there's usually a Versus cut, a Prisonshake cut, et cetera... in each show, where a significant portion of the music I've ever listened to goes virtually untouched at the hands of a select few albums.